Three Dwelling Houses

_{The “The Most Dangerous Game” House, 29,8 x 21,5 cm, pencil and crayon on tone paper, 2019}

This, the “The Most Dangerous Game” house, is a lodge for a special kind of hunter, a bearded one, who hunts the most crafty, murderous, cruel animal: the human animal. Which is the only animal with ethics and moral judgment, thus capable of revenge, not humble. Instead of fangs and claws, it has intelligence. Thus, it is the most dangerous game to hunt. The hunter type to take residence in this house has a taste for Eastern European low density dwelling architecture. The actual depicted setting is generic. A type of less dangerous game, a Bruderus Horten Noncaudatus, a flying wing-type ancient animal with an especially small brain, is flying by, unmolested. It is unclear whether the hunter is presently at home.

^{“Judge Dee” Country House in Carboniferous Setting, 31.5 x 23.5 cm, pencil and crayon on tone paper, 2019}

This is a retreat-type home for the more benign, less damaging to the social fabric kind of hunter, the hunter for peace, quiet and solitude which he/she/it finds ideally represented in a dwelling detached from civilization by a certain distance in the fourth dimension. Thus, the person for this country home must be a time traveller to take leave from all that binds them in the now and find what they seek in a geological space and time which gave birth to all fossile fuel reserves which now fire our unpeaceful modern world, the carboniferous era.

^{The Abductionist’s House, pencil, pastel on tone paper, 29,7 x 21 cm, 2019}

This house offers shelter for a very special kind of lover of humans, the abductionist, the John Fowlesian Collector-type. These are mostly male, for certain reasons which are difficult to specify or elucidate or trace back to either evolutionary or civilizational reasons. The collector traps another hapless human being (like the spider the fly in the parlour with the fine edgings), and keeps this hostage-type specimen under lock and key, for fear of abandonment and in the hope of by keeping this other stationary they could by pervasive and tenacious persuasion win reciprocal love. This person, as the chimney smoke indicates, and by general habit, home. The victim lives probably in the cellar. Two dogs are in a playful mood, but would alarm the house owner by raucous barking if anyone should approach. The house shares certain decorational and structural characteristics with the “The Most Dangerous Game” house, which indicates certain interesting psychological links between hunting and collecting.

For a different kind of author-approved viewing experience, you are invited to redirect here.

All depicted house studies © 2019/2037 by Torsten Slama and the TTS®

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Recently, at the Model Toy Car Convention

At the Toy Car Convention / Un re in ascolto, 2019, pencil and pastel pencil on tone paper, 22,9 x 31,8 cm / 9 x 12.9 inches

Certain display options do not work due to conversion to a block type page set-up model. A new template ought to be chosen. This drawing belongs to a group of smaller and well accomplished drawings made in 2019, which deal with the topic or the author’s personal endeavour of a return to the human figure (after several years or a decade of abstaining from the depiction of human figures). Note that the human figure is a very dangerous item to depict. While from an Islamist perspective, you defy God’s will, in Western society you make certain dangerous statements with each attribute you choose to endow that figure with for the sake of desired or presumed realism. Class, as demonstrated in dress, skin color, sex, all such things have become contentious due to identity politics. It is easy to hurt someone by callously laying open the fact that the author’s inner society might not contain certain sub-species, gender types etc. or might be in some other way testament to the power of categorization. This drawing features a dog-person (the inspector), an overweight person, an unclad youthful person. All, including the dog type seem to belong to the male category, all are united in reveration of a presumably newly released vintage car model (a 1:8 die-cast scale model of a 1910 Benz Limousine) – a fetish linked to a certain sub-type of masculine sexuality. Other interpretations or readings of this image are at the discretion of the observer. It ought to be noted that the dog type is a paraphrase of an original sketch by the author Wolfdietrich Schnurre, depicting an arrogant dog of breeding, featured in the 1962 novel “Die Aufzeichnungen des Pudels Ali”. In this scene, he might not partake in the reveration process, but acts as the inspector, the arrogant non-human agent, observing two employees of the model toy car company, who might be involved in a crime of sorts.

Future © of this nostalgia-tinted drawing by Torsten Slama and the Instrumentality of the Model Toy Car Board

The Plutonian

The Plutonian, pencil, coloured pencil, leaf silver, 39 x 29,7 cm

A compact, strong shunting engine well suited to deal with the adversities of everyday life and hard work. The Plutonian world is the opposite of the cool world. You need to be clad in special alloys and have a powerful yet simple method of propulsion in order to survive the first few meters on your way through life. It seems best not to dwell on further associative stream-of-consciousness writing, but to complement this drawing with a poem:

I did it while suffering
I did it while suffering
Medical complications

I did it while
Facing life
From the perspective of death
Surviving death
Every day

Some elementary truths
I picked up
Along the way
Littered on the wayside
Picked truths like flowers
Some hidden truths
Suppressed truths
I did it while suffering

While suffering
I did things
I lifted things
I saw through things
Elementary things
From the perspective of death
I did it.

So you, who see things
From the perspective of life
All pink, rose tinted
Don’t you dare
To criticize
Or nit-pick
What I did
Because I did it
While suffering.

Rendering © 2027 by Torsten Slama and the Shunting Society, “I did it While Suffering”, poem by Torsten Slama

The Carl Grossberg (The Rift)

The Carl Grossberg, 48 x 36,5 cm, mixed media on yellow tone paper

A detailed, if slightly crammed drawing with the theme of what our world would and could have looked like if energy independence, chemical independence, transportation independence and true man-nature metabolism had been the goal of industrialization. The drawing could also be an illustration to a treatise on “The Rift” (in the universal metabolism of nature), as described by Karl Marx. Not that the artist is deeply informed on the subject. In fact, any assumption of true literacy in any genre is categorically refuted (in accordance with the law of humbleness and common sense). Embedded in the rocky landscape background are several stylized coal liquefaction plants or chemical factories, tubes and pipelines, and one motif from a painting by Carl Grossberg (Fabriklandschaft im Schnee, 1923). Of course there is no snow here, as in fact the yellow color of the cardboard on which the scene was drawn evokes impressions of a slightly murky,  warm climate (perhaps of the inner earth) with sunlight filtering through a crack in the rocky ceiling, further muted by an emission-saturated atmosphere.  The drawing consists of several layers of pencil, colored pencil, washes of acrylics and different reflective and metallic pigments on a base of human spittle (which are in fact all but invisible.  Note that the “inner earth / Hollow Earth” theme has all sorts of connotations, historical science fiction ones as well as the psychoanalytical/gynacocratic/chthonic idea of earth as a womb. It seems in any case appropriate to annex a quote by Bernard Herrmann, wherein he describes his ideas about scoring the Filme “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (1959), since that film features landscapes not unlike the one depicted above: “I decided to evoke the mood and feeling of inner Earth by using only instruments played in low registers. Eliminating all strings, I utilized an orchestra of woodwinds and brass, with a large percussion section and many harps. But the truly unique feature of this score is the inclusion of five organs, one large Cathedral and four electronic. These organs were used in many adroit ways to suggest ascent and descent, as well as the mystery of Atlantis.” Drawing and words (except for italicized words by Bernard Herrmann) by Torsten Slama>

The Kraftick Liquefaction Plant

The Kraftick Liquefaction Plant, 36 x 50 cm, pencil, colored pencil on tone paper

“When Germany still strived for complete autonomy and independence of Western (and Eastern…ed.) influences, coal hydration technology was one of her attempts to realise complete energy independence. Had the hydration plants not been completely eradicated by the end of World War II, their gasoline output would have served Germany’s entire private car fleet well into the 1960’s. ”  National Empowerment through Petrolum (NETP)

Apart from all its pertinence to energy empowerment stratagems, this drawing should be judged on its artistic merits and technical peculiarities. Mixed media technique on tone paper makes for interesting depth effects. The pervading pink motor oil atmosphere is sometimes fought back, at times heightened. Some of the liquefaction towers are aslant. The geological rock formation on which the plant rests seems unstable. Even the thick concrete platform on which all rests cannot prevent warping. Yet maybe the warping is only in the eyes and the hands of the draftsperson. Or perceived aslantness could be an optical illusion due to the diagonal dynamics of the rock-layered landscape in the background, which works against the perpendicularness of the liquefaction towers.

In a special effort to facilitate appreciation of technique, two details are included:

   
Future © of this motor oil colorized drawing by Torsten Slama,the Energy Independence Society, and the NEPT yet undisclosed